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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   1840 thread views

The Motte Moddes: HighSpace (August 2023)

The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.

Who we have

Who we need

The more the merrier, you are free to join in any capacity you wish! I can already identify a few distinct tasks for each position that we could split the work into

  • developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code

  • artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions)

  • writers: worldbuilding/lore, quests, characters

What we have

  • Concept art for a long range missle cruiser, curtesy of @FCfromSSC

  • A proof of concenpt for “strategic” system map we jump into on start of the campaign. It contains a friendly ship and 2 enemy ships, you can chose where to move / which enemy ship to attack.

  • A somewhat actual-game-like workflow. Attacking a ship launches a mission where the two ships are pitted against each other. If you win, the current health of your ship is saved, and you can launch the second attack. If you clean up the map you are greeted with a “You Win” message, or “You Lose” if you lose your ship.

  • A “tactical” RTS-like in-mission view where you can give commands to your ships.

Updates

  • The System Map and the Tactical View got minor pimp-ups. The System Map now shows the ship names, and the Tactical View has a grid to help with orientation, draws ship icons if the ships are too far away to see, and draws waypoint, and target icons to give some indications of the ship's current goals.

  • The System Map now supports Battle Groups, and the player is now in charge of one - the original GTC Trinity cruiser, and a wing of fighters.

  • We now have “just in time” mission generation. Like I mentioned in the previous thread, the scripting API gives you access to the file system, so it was pretty easy to generate a mission file on the fly. This has some advantages over using a “blank” mission file and setting up the mission via the API, because not all mission features are exposed to the API. The most obvious example here will be how there's no longer an “extra” player ship, just the ones explicitly declared for the System Map (in the previous versions you'd be flying a fighter, even though in theory there were no fighters in the System Map).

  • Thanks to the fighters and their current load-out it's actually not that hard to win the game at the moment. Your cruiser will easily dispatch the Shivan one, and as to the corvette, you can order your ships to run away, and take out the turrets yourself, then order your ships to attack. It will take a while, but with a defenseless enemy it's only a question of time.

What's next

  • The System Map didn't get a lot of attention so far, so I'd like expand it. It would be nice to move around an actual star system, add camera movement, and split/merge mechanics for fleets.

  • The Tactical View is somewhat functional, but still needs to give a player handle on what's going on, and better control over their ships. I wanted to add subsystem status, beam cannon charge status, and a handier way to give advanced commands.

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Impressions.

Interceptor: Seems to strongly resemble a rotor-less attack helicopter, which gives off a slight uncanny valley effect. And why is the cockpit so far forward? To give the pilot a wider field of view? Engine appears a little underproportioned for what I assume should be a very fast craft - but you said long-range, not high-speed, so maybe my expectations are wrong. Overall looks cool, wouldn't mind flying it.

Pursuit Frigate: I did not expect that. A flying truss? Well, why not! But that's a lot of ship for something barely armored. I guess it works out by real-world rules where you don't get shot at all the time, but I would not be comfortable flying escort for that in Freespace! By Highfleet rules it would work out though. Also, the tanks are obviously drop tanks, yes? Yes?

Patrol Frigate: Looks like another piece of public infrastructure - in other words, very Highfleet! I like it. Simple, unassuming, utilitarian, like one would expect a medium-size mainline ship to look, and it wouldn't be strange to see many of them. Nice combination of round and blocky shapes. And that cheeky cocked sensor is a nice touch.

Light Missile Cruiser: As previous said, very nice. I have almost no complaints here. Given that it is neither fast nor very armored, how does it defend itself against long-range missile strikes? Fighter cover, EW or anti-missile missiles? I don't see any point defenses on the hull.

Size Comparison: It's been a while since I played Freespace, but where the scales of ships really that much different? Fighters appear very small in that comparison, and those small-to-medium capital ships appear very large. Does the engine support that? If so, no complaints.

Supercapital: Makes me uncomfortable. So many resources in one basket. Also, I'm getting StarSector pains form seeing a ship with a giant hole in the middle. Does the hole do anything? The gantries suggest as much, but it still looks like an aesthetic flourish better suited to a yacht and completely unjustifiable on a warship that big. Apart from the giant glaring hole, the silhouette looks good. If the ship is that big in order to house the biggest railgun possible, then why not make that spinal gun longer by utilizing more of the space behind it? But you say it's a bank of several, so I'm I guess that's not really the point.

On the general symmetry debate: Aesthetically asymmetry can work out, see the Vaygr in Homeworld 2. But as @cjet79 said, there should be some kind of visible justification for it - some large piece of machinery that requires asymmetry to house.

I like your designs. I thought the world of spaceship design had gone entirely stale, but here are some very unexpected ideas.

Interceptor: Seems to strongly resemble a rotor-less attack helicopter, which gives off a slight uncanny valley effect.

The stub-wings definately aren't helping there. I gotta work on that. I'm drawing a bit from M.A.K.'s Lunadiver Stingray, a (far superior) design that I'm a big fan of, but the forms need work.

And why is the cockpit so far forward? To give the pilot a wider field of view?

That, and because there's a bank of railguns running along the underside of the fuselage, and the rear area is taken up by life support and capacitors. Also, because I thought it looked cool! Thinking about it, though, there's no reason not to go glassless and just bury the pilot down in the guts of the craft. They'd be safer there as well...

Engine appears a little underproportioned for what I assume should be a very fast craft - but you said long-range, not high-speed, so maybe my expectations are wrong.

The gubbins on the back of the tail are the torch outlet; the engine is the egg-shaped mass the lattice-tail attaches to. The pipework running down the lattice is supposed to focus and accelerate the high-energy plasma output from the reactor, and the idea is that pushing the outlet back at the end of a long tail allows for a smaller, lighter shadow-shield to protect the rest of the ship from the radiation output of the torch exhaust. It's supposed to be a somewhat kludgy and awkward way to get higher performance without adding weight or cost. The downside would be that the system is effectively unarmored and is quite vulnerable to damage...

Pursuit Frigate: I did not expect that. A flying truss? Well, why not! But that's a lot of ship for something barely armored.

It's really, really small. The crew compartment is somewhere around the size of a large bus, maybe a trailer? Figure maybe 5-8 crew? It's also very fast, so it can try to do hit-and-run tactics with the railgun. But yeah, I was thinking more about how much fun it would be to shoot at; I definately wouldn't want to be responsible for its safety.

Also, the tanks are obviously drop tanks, yes? Yes?

Could be, could very well be. It definately needs more fuel; I didn't leave room for much in the current iteration.

Given that it is neither fast nor very armored, how does it defend itself against long-range missile strikes? Fighter cover, EW or anti-missile missiles?

The idea is that it lobs missiles from extreme range and then runs away, relying on escorts to deal with pursuit or retaliation.

I don't see any point defenses on the hull.

Those are missing from all of these at the moment; I need to design some and then add them in. All the ships should probably have them in some capacity.

Does the hole do anything? The gantries suggest as much, but it still looks like an aesthetic flourish better suited to a yacht and completely unjustifiable on a warship that big.

The idea I was toying with was that the interior of the hole was essentially a dockyard for resupplying and possibly carrying lighter vessels. You're right that it's mostly there for aesthetics, though; holes in ships look cool.

If the ship is that big in order to house the biggest railgun possible, then why not make that spinal gun longer by utilizing more of the space behind it? But you say it's a bank of several, so I'm I guess that's not really the point.

Yeah, I was thinking of the primary railguns more as a saturation barrage weapon rather than maximizing single-hit power. At the scale of a ship like this, extra damage isn't the deciding factor, but you can't kill what you can't hit. The idea was that the railgun bank gives it a massive salvo of heavy shells, such that it can get hits even at significant range simply by throwing so much steel downrange that it can't all miss.

That, and because there's a bank of railguns running along the underside of the fuselage, and the rear area is taken up by life support and capacitors. Also, because I thought it looked cool! Thinking about it, though, there's no reason not to go glassless and just bury the pilot down in the guts of the craft. They'd be safer there as well...

The "hard(er) sci-fi writer explaining away rule-of-cool art" answer is that this is already the case and the dome at the front is a sensor array.

Everything you said is reasonable and satisfies me, but

holes in ships look cool.

is pushing it.

No no no. The holes were never cool. Nobody wants to see your shiphole. Cover it up, for decency's sake.

Edit: No, seriously. Holes always ruin immersion for me. As soon as I see a ship designed with a hole like that, any sense of realism evaporates and I'm back at "spaceships in this work of fiction are just random shapes that move about by magic and do whatever the plot demands, there is no consistent, internally logical underpinning to this world." Same when Starsector has all of its ships that don't have holes instead be bifurcated. I know everyone wants their ship to have a distinct shape, but can't designers be more subtle than to just turn them into Brezeln or croissants?

Size Comparison: It's been a while since I played Freespace, but where the scales of ships really that much different? Fighters appear very small in that comparison, and those small-to-medium capital ships appear very large. Does the engine support that? If so, no complaints.

I originally wanted to bring it up as well, and even wrote a comment to agree with you, but ended up deleting it. The fighters looked very small vs the cap ships for me on mobile, but seem fine on a proper monitor.

Edit: On second thought, I think the cruiser is about destroyer size... I think we'd need one of the FS2 ships next to them for comparison.

@FCfromSSC, can you upload the models of the fighter and one of the ships? I could take a stab at importing them into the game.

...I gotta set up a burner account to get connected to the github project. Darn OPSEC. I tried just changing the file extensions to .png, but that sadly didn't work. I'll try and get that done as soon as possible.

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